Encompassing some 1,600 islands and islets, Ha Long Bay (Gulf of Tonkin) forms a stunning seascape of limestone pillars. With their precipitous nature, most of the islands have been uninhabited and thus unaffected by a human presence. The site is not only exceptionally picturesque, but also holds a great biological interest. --WHMNet paraphrase from the description at WHC Site, where additional information is available. For 360 degree imaging of this site, click here.

Ha Long Bay (Vietnamese: Vịnh Hạ Long) is a UNESCO World Heritage site located in Quảng Ninh province, Vietnam. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various sizes and shapes. In 1962, Vietnam Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism arranged Halong Bay as National Renowned Lanscape Vestige. The bay was World's Natural Heritage listed by UNESCO at the 18th meeting of the Committee of the World Heritages of UNESCO (in Phuket, Thailand on December 17th, 1994) for its outstanding universal aesthetic value according to the criteria (vii) explained in the Operational Guilined for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. On December 2nd, 2000 at the 24th meeting of Committee of the World Heritages in Cairns city, Queensland state, Australia, Halong bay was admitted as World's Natural Heritage extensively for its outstanding universal geological and geomorphological value according to the criteria (viii) of that Convention. Halong bay was introduced to nominate by New Open World Foundation as World's 7 Natural Wonder having result on 08/08/2008. --Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. For 360 degree imaging of this site, click here.